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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26156212">Haunting Pain</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/madisondanes/pseuds/madisondanes'>madisondanes</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Game of Thrones (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Grief/Mourning, Jaime is an idiot, Not A Fix-It, i am just working my feelings out, i refuse the notion that Arya never came back</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:40:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>522</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26156212</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/madisondanes/pseuds/madisondanes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>life is pain - House m.d.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Haunting Pain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i am sorry for any mistakes, as i am not a english speaker.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s in the quiet that her heart breaks all over again, nullifying all the healing that her busy day provides.</p><p>It’s during the quiet nights, even as she is exhausted from training and dealing with the council, and the soldiers, that dreaming of him will leave her a messy pile of heartbroken teary eyed and weary bones. Waking  grasping for breath, as if her heart was being crushed by an invisible fist.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>As such, she much prefers the way Arya approaches her grief now, always moving, never stopping, almost always running from her past. Working herself to the bone so not to think of her family. Never stopping long enough to inevitably think of what it could have been if…</p><p>Arya, who sailed with her ship, destination unknown, and in the process becoming the most valuable instrument of economic welfare and trade in history of Westeros and the independent North. Two years later, she still had to see the young wolf stop for a more than a few days.</p><p> </p><hr/><p>Two years later, Brienne feels stuck in the motion of surviving her grief. Resigned to it, a willing victim of it, incapable of shacking it off.  </p><p>She, unlike Arya, had been a war with herself most times, between the heartbroken part of her that longed for love, a castle, a family, somebody that would choose her for a change, and the knight part of her that was simply furious. Had he not died, she would have killed him, she was sure of it. But he did die, and what good would it do to rage against a corpse. What good could it do, if he wanted it, craved for it. Dying like he lived.</p><p> </p><p>That she could not reconcile.</p><p> </p><p>Her days filled with training, and soldiers and Podrick calling her, <em>my lady Ser</em>.</p><p>She had seriously considered forgetting that the knighting ever happened, and every thing else that happened afterwards. </p><p> </p><p>After all was it not like being knighted by a mad man? Hadn’t she accepted him in her bed? Was she supposed to be proud of it all?</p><p>She wasn’t proud of it. She was ashamed, of him, but mostly of herself.</p><p>Sansa had insisted, that as queen in the north, she would have knighted her again, ceremony, feast and all. Brienne thought she’d rather not.</p><p>Therefore, she let people call her Ser, even though inside her she cringed at the thought, almost wishing to disappear.</p><p>A better woman than her would have proudly told the tale of her knighting. Not her, she just couldn’t, it hurt too much.</p><p> </p><p>She thought naively, that if she wrote of him in the book, if she hung his sword, if she accepted what happened for what it was, she’d be free of it. She had been so wrong.</p><p>It lasted not three whole days and blissful nights, before she dreamed of him again. It was like she was haunted by him, by her choice, by her past.</p><p>Not the taunts, not Renly’s murder, or Lady Catelyn's, had hurt her, scarred her, so deeply.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Nothing else, as far as she was concerned, could ever touch her again.</p><p> </p>
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